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INTRODUCTION.

JOHN LOCKE was born at Wrington, Somersetshire, on the 29th of August, 1632. He was one year younger than John Dryden, and he and Dryden worked for some years under the same roof when they were boys at Westminster School. Locke was elected to a studentship of Christ Church, Oxford, at Whitsuntide, 1652, and went into residence, already twenty years old, in the following November. At Oxford Locke was drawn to the society of scholars whose chief interest was in scientific research by the methods taught in the philo sophy of Francis Bacon. Locke himself was, like Bacon, born for philosophic thought; and, like Bacon, desired to find principles that could be applied to the advancement of the common good. He graduated, and made physic his profession. His health was always delicate-his weakne of chest was ascribed to asthma--and he went road in 1664 with Sir William Swan, who wa Sit as envoy to some German princes. After a year's absence, he returned to Oxford, and was the: when Lord Ashley was sent from London to drink mineral waters at Acton for an abscess in the breast. Lord Ashley wrote to ask Dr. Thomas, a physician at Oxford, to have the waters 92467

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ready against his coming there. Dr. Thomas, being called away, asked his friend, Mr. Locke, to procure them. He employed somebody who disappointed him, and had to call upon Lord Ashley to make apologies. Lord Ashley became fascinated by Locke's liberal and thoughtful conversation, and, in 1667, asked him to stay at his house in London. Shaftesbury urged upon Locke not to pursue medicine as a profession, beyond using his skill among his friends, but to devote the powers of his mind to study of the great questions in politics. Locke did so, and was often consulted by a patron who was but an erratic follower of principles which Locke developed and maintained throughout his life with calm consistency. As one of those included in the grant of Carolina, Lord Ashley employed Locke to draw up a Constitution for the new Colony; he did so, and showed in it a strong regard for civil and religious liberty. In 1668 Locke became one of the Fellows of the Royal Society. Soon afterwards he went abroad with the Earl and Countess of Northumberland; but the Earl died at Turin, in May, 1670. Locke returned to England, lived again with Lord Ashley, and was asked by him to undertake the education of his only son. About the same time he was present in Oxford at a lively discussion, where it seemed to him that the differences of opinion lay wholly in words. This thought first turned his mind in the direction of his "Essay concerning Human Understanding," a work that occupied him afterwards for many years.

In November, 1672, Lord Ashley, who had become Earl of Shaftesbury seven months before, became Lord

Chancellor, and he made John Locke Secretary of Presentations under him during his year of office. In June, 1673, Shaftesbury made Locke also Secretary to a Commission of the Board of Trade, which office, with a salary of £500 a year, Locke held until the Commission came to an end in December, 1674.

Locke had gone to Montpellier, where there was a great medical school, to unite study with the necessary residence in Southern Europe, where he was threatened seriously with advance of consumption, and he was at work there on his "Essay Concerning Human Understanding," when Shaftesbury called him back. He was by Shaftesbury's side in the next months of peril from the conflict with the king. After his escape from the scaffold in 1682 Shaftesbury went to Holland, and died there in 1683. Locke also found it necessary to leave England, and settled in Amsterdam, where he established a fast friendship with Philip van Limborch, pastor of the Church of the Remonstrants, who was within a year of his own age, and like himself was full of a religious spirit of liberty.

At Amsterdam Locke wrote, in Latin, his "Letter Concerning Toleration," as it was printed at Gouda in 1689. The translation of it which is given in this volume was made and published at London in the same year by William Popple.

In February of that year 1689 John Locke came back to England, where he refused to accept from his friends in office any more lucrative post than that of a Commissioner of Appeals, with £200 a year. His Letter on Toleration had to be at once defended from attack. Locke also wrote, within the first months of his return,